On 27 Jul 2011, at 22:17, niels=apwg@bakker.net wrote:
There has been a proper debate. It's lasted three years.
Well IMO, any debate lasting *that* long cannot be called "proper". A more honest description might be "ivory-towered" or "defective". There is something fundamentally wrong if we can't get a policy done in 3 years(!) and then have what appeared to be a consensus come off the rails at the very last moment. We, the RIPE community, should hang our heads in shame. Imagine the derision we'd rightly heap on other policy- making bodies if they had produced this outcome. And we all know a few of them. Please note I am not criticising the people who raised those last- minute objections at all. [Though it's a pity they didn't engage much earlier.] I'm actually relieved they intervened while the opportunity was still there. This had to be more preferable than declare a consensus, implement the policy and then have serious objections emerge. Though I admit both options are unpleasant. One's just worse than the other.
Trying to sneak it in via the back door of the AGM doesn't sound like a great strategy to me.
That's grossly unfair Neils. Nigel clearly asked for a documented decision. In the absence of viable alternatives, the NCC AGM seems the obvious forum for that decision. Nigel just asked that the membership should have a vote on whether the NCC continues doing what's in the activity plan or stops. He was very careful not to say what that decision should be. Or even what the NCC membership should vote on because, strictly speaking, he hasn't proposed a resolution for May's AGM. It should be patently clear RIPE cannot take a decision about address certification any time soon, if ever. So the NCC membership seems the best (or least worst) choice as a suitable forum in our service region that could actually take a decision on this issue, whatever that may be. It's simply unacceptable to collectively shrug our shoulders at what has happened and wish the wreckage to vanish all by itself. For one thing, we have a duty to those in the community who have not followed the detail of 2008-08. They deserve an answer. So do our friends at the other RIRs. Uncertainty about address certification in our service region has an impact on them and their communities. There are also further global impacts. It would not surprise me if governments who are supportive of the RIR system and its bottom-up policy making processes take a rather dim view of what's happened too. There's a nasty question that needs resolving and soon: "how can you spend 3 years debating an important policy, letting if implode at the last minute and then just walk away?". It's these sorts of risks that have to be mitigated. The NCC will have a key role in that risk mitigation effort. So with that context in mind, what do we do now? For some definition of "we". I think Nigel's suggestion is not just sensible, it has to be the next best (or least worst) option. Feel free to make better suggestions... We'll look really dysfunctional if we let address certification continue as our very own long-running and real-world version of Schrodinger's famous thought experiment.